Sever FUSE ties as soon as can be

Published 6:07 pm, Thursday, July 3, 2014

When you talk about not being able to win for losing, once again it's the Bridgeport public school system, and one of its historically down-and-out schools.

The purported saviors of Dunbar School, in the heart of the city's impoverished East End -- an outfit called FUSE, short for Family Urban Schools of Excellence -- have turned out to be more charlatan than miraculous and have set back the cause of charter schools and, far more importantly, the fortunes of some 300 youngsters who deserve better.

Last week, it was the executive director of FUSE who was found to have had criminal convictions for forgery and embezzlement, served prison time and to have falsely claimed the academic credential of a doctorate. He resigned in short order.

Now, it is a FUSE employee -- an aide at Dunbar -- who's been revealed as a registered sex offender in Texas, and as a man with felony drug convictions.

This came as news to the Bridgeport superintendent of schools and, apparently, to state officials.

Certainly not all charter school operations run with the cavalier disregard it appears infuses this operation. And charter schools indeed can play a role in the process that may lead to improved education in places like Bridgeport. No one would say that patronage-driven traditional public school systems are without flaw.

But charter schools' nebulous blend of private operators and public money cannot be allowed to result in fiascoes like the one unraveling now in Bridgeport.

There are a number of issues at play here. State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor went on the record this week in noting that criminal records should not necessarily bar someone from employment in a school system. He happens to be right. Employment for ex-offenders is vital, and the best way to keep them from becoming repeat offenders.

But even more essential is transparency. And, grand redemption or not, the fact that former FUSE leader Michael Sharpe went to prison for embezzlement, and that his organization has been the recipient of millions of dollars in state funding, and that no one seemed to be aware of any of this, simply defies belief.

The findings on Bridgeport's Mack Allen, the former Dunbar aide, only add to the perception that no one was steering the ship.

This falls on the state. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his education commissioner, Stefan Pryor, are unabashed charter school backers. And that's fine. But charters aren't the solution all by themselves, as anyone who has studied the issue would know. In its zeal to promote charters and charter operators, in its rush to promote a flawed solution, the state has demonstrably failed the school systems it was supposed to have been helping.